


With Our Back to the Sun

by Aesoleucian



Category: Naruto
Genre: Dissociative Identity Disorder, M/M, also a stressed out kid murdering people because you know how it is in naruto
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 17:21:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7723174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aesoleucian/pseuds/Aesoleucian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you don’t feel like any of you really belong in your head, it’s hard to tell that one of you really doesn’t. It’s hard to tell when one of you is an ancient demon pretending to be your mother, because you’re weirder people all the time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Our Back to the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> So yesterday I read the beginning of a Gaara story where he has dissociative identity disorder and I was REALLY EXCITED because that's me! And then it was this shitty edgelord thing like "he has a Voice In His Head that Tells Him to Kill People! how teenaged!" So I got pissed off and decided to write a better one out of pure spite.
> 
> The language in this fic will probably be confusing, because it turns out it's VERY DIFFICULT to put into words the exact experience of system members talking to each other. And also because, especially when he's being used as a weapon, Gaara is really stressed out and conflicted and that's reflected in the relationships of his system members. Oh, yeah, and one of the POV members is a girl, and sometimes the POV is somehow all of them? It's really confusing being me. 
> 
> OKAY I'm trying not to write a mini meta essay in the notes but I will at the slightest provocation if anyone's interested. Cheers, and enjoy!

Gaara doesn’t know where he is. That’s not really unusual, but he can’t see the village, which is a little worrying. He thinks. Who is he right now? And who got him here?

He’s sitting in a shallow wash, red sandstone bottom and a cluster of brightly colored scrub and succulents. Maybe Saboten came here to look at them. If he concentrates, he can get an impression of pictures drawn in the sand, spiky leaves and the tiny yellow flowers of rabbitbrush. He doesn’t remember what Saboten was doing before that, though. The past is a closed book, except for a few vivid images that stick in his mind. Mostly the ones involving blood.

That’s how he got here, so who is he now? Someone who has trouble moving. Someone who has trouble focusing their eyes. Someone who has trouble forming coherent thoughts. So he’s Sabaku.

It’s almost sunset, and the shadow of the rim of the wash is creeping toward him, so he doesn’t bother putting up a roof of sand. Maybe he’ll sleep here tonight. No-one will miss him. He can’t currently think of anyone who lives in the village, but if anyone would miss him, he’d remember them, right?

Slowly, he draws the sand from above. It will be warmer, he thinks. Then he remembers it’s not dark yet, so he spends a while watching ants crawl around the base of the rabbitbrush. Someone says, you should kill them. Crush them. Someone says, don’t hurt them. He can’t make up his mind, so he does nothing. It’s easier if he doesn’t have to move. He draws some more pictures in the sand, abstract geometric shapes and wind shapes and birds.

It’s past sunset, maybe by an hour, when he remembers he doesn’t sleep. It’s a silly thing to forget, but Sabaku has a really bad memory. So he watches for the moon to come up.

The moon is large and half-flat in the sky when he remembers that he doesn’t sleep because of blood. The blood is important, but he can’t remember why. It’s Mother’s fault, probably, because Mother is obsessed with blood. But if blood comes from people, and there are no people out here, it’s probably okay. So he goes to sleep.

\--

He wakes up, and the world is small, small, too small. He has to leave. Then he’s on a platform of sand, rising into the air, higher and higher and higher to look for Suna. He sees it, and then he pauses because last night he was thinking about Saboten. Maybe he’ll walk home, and he can look for plants she’ll like. He tries hard to remember if they already have any of the plants from the wash at home, then gives up and asks Saboten, who points out one with red flowers on a long stem.

He’s glad to have company on the way back, at least. And Saboten doesn’t make him walk because he’s impatient to _move_ , so it takes no time at all to fly back to Suna. He’s not sure what day it is when he gets there, because he’s not sure when they left or how long they were gone. Saboten might have walked all the way out there, which could have taken an entire day. But there’s a calendar in the Kazekage’s office that shows what day it is, so he sends his third eye to look. Then he goes to his room to pot the red-flowered plant and find his own calendar that shows what he has to do today.

He’s training with Baki at noon. So he has time to eat, and he goes to the kitchen to find food. The people there are afraid of him, but he’s the Kazekage’s son and he’s the seal that holds a demon and he can kill them if he wants, so he ignores them and keeps his face a bored mask. They _should_ be afraid. He can kill them if he wants, but he won’t because that’s Mother’s thing and he _hates_ Mother. So he takes bread and stew and he leaves without talking to anyone. Then he goes to the training room and starts warming up because he cannot stand to be still.

Baki comes in and bows, and Gaara does not bow because he’s Fuuin and he doesn’t need to bow to anyone. And then they train. There’s a nice kind of trance he gets into when he’s fighting: his body does the thinking for him, so that he doesn’t have to be anyone. Even Mother is quiet while she knows it’s just practice.

Baki tells him to stay afterward so he stands still, a little tired. Temari and Kankurou come in, and it looks like they weren’t expecting him to be here because their bodies kind of close off and they start glancing at him in quick flashes like he won’t notice if they do it fast enough.

“As you know,” says Baki, “The next chuunin exam is in Konoha. As you have probably also heard, we have entered into an alliance to crush Konoha. To that end, you three are weapons of the Sand. Not only weapons of war, but of fear. You have completed enough missions as a three-man team to enter, so you will enter. This is non-negotiable.”

“As Kazekage-sama orders,” says Temari. Her face is blank, like Gaara’s usually is. He doesn’t know what it means. Kankurou is frowning a little bit, but he echoes her words.

“Are we going to walk in and kill everyone?” asks Gaara.

“No,” says Baki. “There is going to be a plan. You will all follow this plan exactly, with no deviations, for the good of your village, got it?” He looks at Gaara, who is going to forget the plan as soon as he steps out of this room. Gaara stares at him. “I’ll write down a copy for you,” he says. “The basic gist of the plan is that you are not to kill anyone until the last phase of the exam, when the spectators are put under a sleeping genjutsu.”

“Don’t we kill people in the second phase of the exam?” asks Gaara. Mother is wondering, almost hovering over his shoulder, eager for blood even one day sooner.

Baki sighs. “Yes, you can. Just not too many. Don’t draw attention to yourselves.” He’s probably talking about the three of them on the team, Gaara and Temari and Kankurou, but Gaara likes to think he’s talking about the six of them that all live in Gaara’s head. Do you hear that, Mother? Don’t draw attention to them. Mother growls in the back of their head and says something vaguely sarcastic. She says, he’ll be a good boy, won’t he? He’ll be a good boy and get her the blood she wants? Or does she have to _force him_.

No, says Fuuin. They’ll kill when _they_ want to, not when she wants it. Maybe they won’t kill anyone at all.

They’ll kill for the good of the village, and because Father and Mother say so. They’ll kill, and they’ll enjoy it, says Katana. Oh yes they will.

He looks up suddenly, and realizes he’s missed an unknown amount of the plan. Temari is asking a question about their allies, who are from Oto, and he’s not even exactly sure where that is.  It’s too late to start listening now, so he leaves. Baki will give him the written down plan later, so he doesn’t need to be here.

\--

When he gets to Konoha he’s Fuuin, watching and waiting and making sure no-one goes against the plan. He has it in his pocket, clenched in his fist, but he’s only watching himself. Clearly it’s a mistake. He should have been watching his brother, because almost as soon as he drifts away (so they’ll stop _looking at him like that, little glances, tense shoulders_ ) he hears the word _kill_ and pulls himself back to watch. Kankurou is threatening a little kid, and one of the Konoha genin aims a stone at him. He gets angry because he’s on edge and he likes showing off, because he thinks hurting other people makes him better than them, like a fool. Katana disagrees, thinks that it does actually make him better than them, but when Kankurou takes his puppet down from his back Fuuin has to intervene.

He lets himself fall and stick to the underside of a tree branch, because he likes to show off too. It’s useful, a weapon of fear. “Kankurou, stop it,” he says. “You’re an embarrassment to our village.” Kankurou turns, and his face changes from intimidating to contrite. Or afraid. It can be hard to tell. “Losing control of yourself in a fight is pathetic. Why do you think we came to Konoha?” Remember the _plan_ , idiot.

“Listen, Gaara, they started it…” Kankurou sounds like when he’s talking to Father. Excuses. He really is pathetic.

“Shut up,” says Katana. “I’ll kill you.” For once Fuuin can’t really disagree.

He lets Kankurou and Temari stutter through their awkward apologies—pathetic, pathetic, pathetic—and then turns to the genin who threw the stone. “Sorry about that,” he tells the genin flatly, then jumps down into the street between Temari and Kankurou. “We’re here early, but remember, we didn’t come here to play around. Let’s go.” His hand tightens on the plan in his pocket. Baki thought _Gaara_ was the one who would forget it.

“Wait,” says another one of the genin, a pointless one. “Our countries may be allies, but it’s forbidden to enter each other’s villages without permission. State your purpose. Depending on what you say, we might not be able to let you go.” Fuuin lets Temari answer. If everyone in Konoha is this ill-informed and ill-prepared, they don’t even need allies from Oto. Gaara could do it by himself.

He’s about to turn around and leave when the stone-thrower asks his name. It takes a second to remember that he can’t introduce himself as Fuuin _or_ Katana. “Gaara of the desert,” he says. “And you. You’re interesting. What’s your name.” The boy is strong, maybe even enough to be an actual threat. Fuuin should test him. Katana thinks _he_ should get to test the boy, but he doesn’t have the self-control.

“Uchiha Sasuke,” he says.

“Hm. Let’s go.” He jumps up to a nearby roof, and Temari and Kankurou follow. “I won’t punish you this time,” he says quietly. “But stick to the plan. You make the whole village look bad.”

“Yes,” mutters Kankurou, staring at his feet. It feels good to be able to control him, but Fuuin doesn’t have enough control, not yet.

\--

He manages to give Mother enough blood to calm her down. Three during the second phase, and though Fuuin won’t let him kill Sasuke while he’s injured or while he’s training, Katana finds ways. Soon, he tells himself, he tells Mother, very soon we will have all the blood we can drink. He can’t kill Sasuke yet, he tells her over and over, but _soon_ —

Fuuin is barely restraining him by the time his fight with Sasuke is declared. Then Mother strikes with an almost physical force, shooting pain through his head. “Don’t get so angry… Mother…” She’s taking the sand from him, reaching toward Sasuke to crush him. “I’m sorry, Mother, I had to feed you some bad blood earlier…” Screw it. Screw the plan. “This time it will be delicious.”

He watches Sasuke tumble around him, almost vibrating with tension every time he misses grabbing him. But Sasuke is better than he should be, much better than last time Gaara saw him. Fuuin hasn’t missed _pain_ but Mother loves it, even when it’s their own body. His armor is starting to crack, and he _hates_ to lose. He HATES TO LOSE. Mother, help us. Mother.

She gathers a shell of sand around him like in egg, and in the darkness he forms seal after seal, a sequence she tells him so he never has to remember. And Katana tells her what he’ll do to Sasuke, the blood she’ll have, that he’s good. Then there’s _pain_ , much more than he’s ever felt, and he screams. He’s never smelled his own blood before, never felt it dripping, and it’s _hot_ —

\--

She wakes up to the smell of green, pushing past her face, cool and damp. Temari is carrying her through the trees. Why are there trees? They’re beautiful, bigger than anything she’s ever seen. “Temari,” she says. “Put me down.”

“Ah, Gaara, you’re awake?” Temari touches down on one of the thick tree branches. The bark has such an interesting texture, but she has the nagging feeling there’s something more important she should be worrying about. Then Mother screams in her head, she falls to her knees, and she remembers what it is. Someone started the transformation.

“Temari, leave.” Her sister looks surprised, somehow. “Get out of here!” She’ll die, and Saboten doesn’t _want_ her to die. But Saboten is losing control already, and Fuuin backhands Temari into a tree a hundred meters away. Sasuke is standing on another tree branch, which is just as surreal as he should expect. How did he get here? How did Sasuke get here?

Mother screams again, and another flash of searing pain through his head distracts him.

“Show me your true face,” says Sasuke, or maybe he’s imagining it. He looks up, trying to focus.

“You,” he says. “You’re strong. You have… friends. You have ambition. Yet you’re like me. When I kill you I’ll destroy all of that, and then I will know I’ve lived. I’ll survive, and I’ll _live_.” He nearly manages to get to his feet before his mind starts to burn. All of his skin feels like it’s burning off as the demon emerges from him. It coats him, muffling the world and blurring his sight, and all he can hear is Mother laughing. Katana is talking to Sasuke, screaming at him, taunting him until he hurts them again.

Sasuke is weak. They have to kill him, they have to have to have to because he’s weak and they are strong, but these _bugs_ keep _getting in their way_. Insects who try to protect each other as if the bonds of “comrades” mean something. The only comrades they’ve ever been able to rely are each other. A boy whose name he doesn’t remember is paralyzed by a threat to a girl, one of his teammates, as if it matters.

“What do they mean to you?” he asks.

“They’re my friends!” shouts the boy. “Leave them alone or I’ll kick your ass!”

He squeezes, and the girl screams. He’ll crush her. Let this stupid child feel a fraction of the pain he’s felt. “Aren’t you going to kick my ass for that?” he snarls.

“BRING IT ON!” the boy screams.

Another wave of pain tears through his body as the demon stretches further outward. When he looks up the boy is still there, wasting time on something he can’t make out. “I’ll kill her, eventually,” he tells the boy. “Will you fight for her, or will you defend yourself?” If he can crush the boy’s spirit… If he can _crush him_ … Let him feel despair like they have. Let him take the coward’s way out and show that he’s even weaker than they are.

He multiplies into a hundred of himself, and they’re not sure if they’re hallucinating, because this has never happened before. But no, when they reach out the _clones_ disappear into smoke. The demon grows, and grows and grows until the trees are small and far away and fleetingly Saboten can feel the wind on her skin, for once bare of sand. But it’s no place for her, and she hides. Katana is getting ready to crush the girl and the boy both. He decides to go to sleep (finally, _finally_ ) so the demon can come out, because Katana loves Mother and Mother loves the demon and they all love blood.

\--

Pain in his jaw wakes him up. He’s confused, not sure who or where he is, but when he focuses his eyes there’s a person and a fist coming for him again. “No!” he shouts. “I won’t disappear! I’ll survive!” and what feels like a twenty-ton weight crashes into the front of his skull. The person, the boy, is saying something that he forgets as soon as he hears it, but there’s a boy and a fist coming for him again so he reaches out with his own fist and his own violence. And falls.

Who is this boy, and why is he so strong? _Why is he trying to kill Gaara_? “Our existence won’t end,” he says. “There’s no way I’d let us die.” It’s as unconvincing to himself as it must be to the boy who’s crawling toward him over the ground. “Don’t come any closer!” he says. Please, please. They can’t die now.

“The pain of being alone isn’t easy to bear,” says the boy. What? “Why is it that I can understand your pain?” He can’t, no-one can, no-one _ever_. “But I already have a lot of people who are important to me, and I won’t let you hurt them. I’ll stop you.”

“Why do you go so far for other people?” he mumbles.

“They saved me from the hell of being alone.” There is no salvation. “They acknowledged my existence.” Only with fear. “That’s why they’re important to me.” There is only one person who was ever important to them, and they can’t forget his death. They can’t forget him drawing blood willingly out of his finger just to tell little Ningyou-chan that he could heal his wounds with love. If you find people to stand beside you, he said, and if you make them important to you, they will always watch over you with love. The only people they love are each other, themself, but the boy who won’t stop _looking_ at them has enough love for people outside himself.

Gaara almost wishes the boy had enough love for him. The boy is invincible because he is connected to other people. He can’t be cut out of the world.

Uchiha Sasuke kneels down to take the boy away—even he, whose strength is in hatred, loves that boy. And Gaara hates the boy almost as much as he loves him. Why does he get love? What has he done to deserve it that they haven’t?

Temari and Kankurou appear in front of him like a shield of sand, watching the Konoha genin for danger instead of him. Is this maybe what love is like? “It’s over,” he tells them, quietly. Kankurou bends down to pick him up and support him, and he thinks, yes. This is what love is like. He will learn to be better at it.

“Temari, Kankurou,” he whispers. “I’m… sorry.”

Kankurou doesn’t go stiff under his arm. “It’s… it’s all right,” he says.

\--

Ningyou-chan used to be a little boy, before he died. But he’s been dead seven years, a hollowed-out corpse like the best (worst) puppetmasters of the Sand make. Not quite reanimated but not quite dead any more. He died every time his father sent someone to kill him, every time got up weaker, until he killed his uncle and his uncle killed him and Katana got up in his place.

Today Ningyou is looking out over the empty desert, so huge that it scares him. He can’t do this alone, but he needs to protect people. It will make him human, to care. He won’t have to be a puppet any more.

He’s not alone, Fuuin reminds him. He will protect all of them, and they will protect him.

Footsteps behind him, and Kankurou’s chakra. He doesn’t turn. “There you are, Gaara,” says Kankurou. “You haven’t reconsidered, have you?” He stops, waiting for Ningyou to answer, but when there’s only silence he continues. “I don’t want to have to say this, but to the people you’re a frightening weapon. It’s going to be _hard_ to become Kazekage and even harder to keep the position. The council doesn’t think much of you, either. They say someone the whole village is afraid of shouldn’t be Kazekage.”

Temari should probably be Kazekage, but Gaara is as selfish as he always has been. “I know,” says Ningyou. “But just waiting is so much worse.” He feels Fuuin behind him, strong and ready to catch him if he falls. “All I can do is create my own place through hard work. Being alone is the easy way out, even if it hurts. Someday, maybe I’ll be like…” They found out his name later, poring over the exam registry. Uzumaki Naruto. The boy who already forged a path through hatred and fear and out the other side. “That’s why I’m going to be Kazekage,” he says. “To live for the village. To gain their respect through hard work, and to get them to stop fearing me. Before, bonds with others were an annoyance—” burning his heart because he couldn’t have them “—to the point where it made me want to kill. But Uzumaki Naruto made me understand that I _can_ have them. He knew the same pain I did but he changed his path.” He pauses, watching the sun distorting itself, rippling on the horizon. “My wish is to be needed by someone, not as a weapon but as a leader.” He can feel Fuuin’s happiness like strong sunlight on his back, as if to say, you are our leader. You were lost, and now we have you back, and we can be a person again. It didn’t work out so well the first time but we’ll try harder. We’ll make it work.

“I’ll support you as much as I can,” says Kankurou. Ningyou had forgotten he was there, actually; he’d just been thinking out loud.

Smiling, he turns around to look at his brother. “Thank you.”

\--

He wakes up with a lingering taste of white, cracked earth behind his eyes. When he opens them, he sees Uzumaki Naruto, the boy he’s dreamed of for almost three years, with a hand on his shoulder. He can’t remember how he got here, but that’s not unusual. He tries to remember, and gets an image of _high over the village at night_. That’s not helpful. Then his eyes focus past Naruto and he sees a crowd of people standing around him, people he recognizes.

“Everyone was rushing to save you,” says Naruto, smiling. “You put us through a lot, you know.” Gaara can’t look away from his face. He’s radiant.

“For sure,” says Kankurou behind them. “I always have to be worrying about my little brother, don’t I?”

“Don’t be a loser,” says Temari. “He’s still the Kazekage. You _underling_.” He loves her, he thinks, as she leans down to look closer at him. “Gaara, how are you feeling?” He tries to rise, but his muscles are locked up. They feel stiff and purple, creaking like old wood. “Don’t be in such a hurry to move,” she says. “You’re not back up to full strength yet.”

A few meters away a group of people is gathered around an unconscious body, one he thinks he recognizes as Elder Chiyo. Something happened to him, maybe the same thing that happened to her. “She wasn’t the kind of person who would do something like this for Gaara,” Temari is saying. What did she do?

“Chiyo entrusted the future to you and Gaara, Naruto,” says an unfamiliar Konoha nin. “A truly fitting last moment for a shinobi.”

He frowns. What happened to Chiyo? Then he realizes, from the people crying next to her, that she must be dead or seriously wounded. He reaches for Naruto, and Naruto helps him up (Naruto’s hand on his arm) and stands to say, “We should pray for Elder Chiyo.”

It takes a long time to get back to Suna because he doesn’t have enough chakra to fly. Naruto insists on carrying him, which makes something warm settle in his gut. And on the way Naruto tells him what happened.

He _tries_ to listen, he really does, but he keeps getting distracted by the pure sound of Naruto’s voice and the feeling of Naruto’s solid back. Too much has happened since he woke up, and much too quickly. Fuuin is keeping him as focused as he can, but Sabaku can only hold so much before it starts overflowing his mind like water from an overfull jar. Naruto smells like sweat and dirt and blood.

“Can you… write it down later?” he asks quietly.

“Huh?” Naruto’s voice is too loud, and he winces. “Oh, sorry, I’ll try not to shout in your ear. What d’you mean, write it down?”

“I have… I have a really bad memory,” he says. “And I can’t concentrate very well on words.” It’s not the best quality for a Kazekage, but Fuuin and Kaze help him when he needs it. “You did say that Shukaku is gone, right?” Naruto nods. “Then we were dead, before Chiyo gave her life to revive us.”

“Um, no, she only revived you, Gaara. Shukaku is still gone.”

He forgot, somehow, that Naruto doesn’t know. It feels like he’s told Naruto many times. “Oh. I knew that. I meant the six—the five of me.” He doesn’t need to tell Naruto this. He realized a few years ago that most people don’t have a community in their head, which seems lonely. When he told Temari she looked at him like he was dangerous for the first time in two years, and he doesn’t want Naruto to look at him like that. But he says it anyway. “I’m five people. I don’t know how to explain it better than that.”

“What, like, uh. Who is there besides Gaara?”

“It’s me, Fuuin, Katana, Saboten, and.” He can’t remember the last person he is. Dammit… Oh! “And Kaze who used to be Ningyou-chan. We’re all in charge of different things. I’m… in charge of forgetting.”

Naruto laughs. “That doesn’t really make sense, but it’s pretty funny that you have a team leader in charge of forgetting. So, wait, how does the switching work?”

Sabaku explains as best he can, with help from Fuuin and Saboten. Naruto doesn’t think he’s _crazy_ , just kind of weird. But, as Naruto says, if being weird were a crime he’d be serving a life sentence. And he laughs. Gaara tucks his face into Naruto’s shoulder and lets him talk more, things Gaara won’t remember but that he’s glad to listen to.

Naruto carries him all the way back to his room, and finally stops in front of his bed to set him gently down on the edge. “Get some rest, okay…?” he says. “Um… wait, who are you right now?”

“Kaze,” he says, smiling. It’s the first time anyone’s asked him that. Then he realizes Naruto’s staring at him a little blankly, and he’s not sure what it means. “Are you okay?”

“Um. Sorry. Your smile is really beautiful.”

Kaze stares at him just as blankly, eyes wide. “…Really?”

“I never saw you smile before, so, I was kinda surprised, and, it’s really nice when you’re happy…” He looks down at his hands, which are twisted together, fidgeting. “I know I haven’t seen you in like three years but I thought about you a lot and I was really, really worried about you, so. I’m just relieved you’re okay, I guess.” Naruto thought about him. It feels like the sunlight of Fuuin at his back, but shining on his face instead. “Um, how do you feel about hugs? I mean, I know you were _kind of basically_ hugging me the whole way here but you didn’t really get a choice so…”

Kaze tries to get up, but his shaking legs don’t support him very well. Naruto is there instead, holding his forearms, pulling him closer. When he’s standing, Naruto puts his arms around Kaze’s waist, creating a shared space between them. Their foreheads are touching, and Kaze notes that he’s about a centimeter taller than Naruto. It’s nothing like the other hugs Gaara has had before.

“You’re very important to me,” Kaze murmurs.

“Yeah,” says Naruto faintly. “You too. I mean…” He tilts his head up until their noses brush. Kaze, however bad he is at reading body language, is pretty sure this means Naruto wants to kiss him. So he leans that last little bit forward—

“Gaara, I brought you some food if you’re not already—woah. Nice, little brother! Should I come back later?”

It takes Kaze a moment to notice that he’s turned around to stare at Kankurou. “If you tell anyone I’ll kill you. No, shut up. I mean, please don’t say anything.” Of all the times Katana could have picked to get irrationally defensive, this is probably the worst. “Sorry. Sorry, Kankurou.”

Kankurou comes in and sets a plate of food on the table. “No worries, little brother. _You_ , however…” He turns to Naruto, whose face is bright red. “If you make my brother sad I’ll… hmm, I can’t kill you, that would cause a diplomatic incident. I’ll think of a really creative torture for you. Temari can help me out.” He laughs at the look on Naruto’s face and goes out the door. “Seeya!”

There’s a long silence, during which Naruto runs his hands through his hair, looking… upset? “Oh, man,” he says. “I just kissed the Kazekage.”

“ _I_ kissed _you_.”

“The Kazekage just kissed me!”

“I know,” says Kaze. “I was there.”

Naruto jumps on him and kisses him so hard that his legs finally give out, and he’s left hanging from Naruto’s shoulders. He doesn’t really object.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Ningyou-chan: "Little Puppet"  
> Katana: I was slightly surprised to find that this is like, the most generic word for "sword." The more you know!  
> Fuuin: "Sealing" (originally he was named "Seal" but that's just "Fuu" and there are already two characters in Naruto with that name, kind of)  
> Saboten: "Cactus," because she loves plants. (originally her name was "Aloe" but it turns out there's no word for that in Japanese)  
> Sabaku: "The Desert"


End file.
